Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

In Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Bechdel’s writing, specifically the ethical considerations (and sometimes lack thereof) taken when portraying characters, shape the text in ways that suggest separation between Bechdel as a narrator and Bechdel as a character in her own story. Although the character that Bechdel describes seems to falsify the past at times, Bechdel as a narrator retains the reader’s trust by showing her character’s obvious flaw in memory through her perspective as a child, coupled with observations made by the adult Bechdel narrating the work. These two perspectives lead to the reality the reader finds themselves in with Bechdel at the story’s close. This “reality” is truth as we know it; what we perceive to be real life. The formerly mentioned observations take the form of re- occurring illustrations of seemingly minor objects that reveal her character’s inner workings. Bechdel confronts the ethical concerns in how she portrays other characters by showing the reader this younger character’s flawed perspective and the link between this character and the narrator, how these flawed memories shape the comic into a trustworthy autobiography of events in Bechdel’s life. Although the text is narrated by the trustable Bechdel, questions of ethics in how she portrays her characters surface early on for the reader. Bechdel portrays her father as an uncaring, selfish, largely abusive father in her life. Bechdel draws her father looking quite detached from his family, staring at a teenage alter boy- we are made to think- inappropriately. The reader doesn’t doubt that her father was abusive because of the frequent description of aggressive outbursts and the scars left in her memory. This abuse is shown when her father breaks dishes on the floor during a family dinner in a fit of rage. We accept this as true reality because of the scar Bechdel so vividly remembers acquiring, signing the piece of floor where the dish broke as a “permanent linoleum...

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...Rachael Woodard Woodard 1
Dr. Jackson
Essay #3
December 3, 2012
FunHome
In Chapter Four, recreations of photographs from the author’s and her father’s pasts are emphasized. Why does Bechdel push these images so strongly in this section? Bechdel emphasizes these photographs so much in this chapter because they are the missing pieces to the puzzle in a sense. To specify, the missing pieces are the explanation for the trips they took, the nights her dad came in late, the arguments her parents had and also her sexuality meaning. Before I begin going in depth about each individual picture, let’s analyze why these pictures are so important as a whole.
In addition to the pictures being the connecting, throughout her whole life Bechdel questioned the way her father lived. Was he or was he not Homosexual? She could live with it why couldn’t he? She even thought he was just experimenting at one point. Even though her dad played the father role he wasn’t there as a father should be because he wasn’t living life the way he wanted to. Mr. Bechdel had a second life that he was living but when he got home to his reality maybe the pictures were a reminder of where he wants to be and where he has to be. He wants to be where he is most happy, but he has to be with his family in his normal life portraying the ultimate family man role. Consequently, this is why they took trips, so he could be Mr....

...Samantha Trost
Structural Analysis
Professor Drolet
10/30/12
FunHome
Alison Bechdel, who is best known for her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For wrote the autobiographical comic, FunHome: A FamilyTragicomic, with one of the most intelligent and insightful autobiographical comics. Her graphics avoids the normal confessional, self-obsessed nature of much autobiography by focusing not just on Alison herself but on her and her father’s complicated relationship. The subtitle’s “Tragicomic” also signals an interesting theme throughout the book: the way her and her dad are complete opposites but so similar at the same time. The narrative unfolds in an unusual manner that makes it difficult to describe especially with the graphics that end a completely different element to the story. The story weaves around the central events of her father’s death and her learning, a few months earlier, that he was gay but if she had known that before his death, would it have made them closer or push them further away?
It is particularly interesting to note how this novel engages readers in a serious discussion of the ways our parents can scar us. While Bruce Bechdel is shown to have an explosive temper and be prone to the occasional violent outburst, it is the distance he creates in the household that seems to cause the most harm: “It was a vicious circle, though. The more gratification...

...Julia Ross
Professor Estevez
English 243
23 April 2014
FunHome: A FamilyTragicomic
Alison Bechdel's "FunHome: A FamilyTragicomic" is an exciting autobiography with comics that bring her story to life. Alison Bechdel wrote this book about her childhood, the relationship she had with her father and one of the many things they shared in common, their sexuality. In addition to their common homosexuality, Alison and Bruce Bechdel share o b sessive compulsive tendencies and their artistic ways, even using her artistic language to describe the father daughter relationship they had, "I was Spartan to my father's Athenian. Modern to his Victorian. Butch to his nelly. Utilitarian to his aesthete." This opposition was a source of tension in their relationship, as both tried to express their dissatisfaction with their given gender roles: "Not only were we inverts, we were inversions of each other. While I was trying to compensate for something unmanly in him, he was attempting to express something feminine through me. It was a war of cross-purposes, and so doomed to perpetual escalation."
At the center of where it all begins at "FunHome," Alison helps us envision her desperate need to make a connection with her father, Bruce Allen Bechdel. Father and daughter are playing a game of "airplane" that ends almost as soon as it begins because...

...About the book:
Alison Bechdel’s father Bruce was a high school English teacher, a funeral home operator, and a man who worked tirelessly to restore his Victorian-era home to its original glory. He was a husband and father of three children. On the outside, the Bechdels were a functional nuclear family. However, soon after Bechdel came out to her parents, she learned her father was also gay and that he had sexual relationships with his students.
Months after her announcement, her mother filed for divorce – and two weeks after that, her father got run over by a truck.
Was it an accident? Was it suicide? Bechdel thinks it was the latter, and in FunHome, she analyzes her memories, books, and family letters in an attempt to understand who Bruce was and why he chose a life that dissatisfied him so deeply.
What I liked:
Bechdel’s analysis of her and her father’s lives, and her ability to wed it to distinct visuals, was inventive and involving. I remember one page in particular where she mapped out the places where her father was born, lived, and died, and circumscribed the area within one tidy circle to reveal that all of these important things happened within one mile’s distance of each other. The narrative loops back and forth upon itself, and parcels out new information at a measured pace, showing the readers new facets of the same story as it progresses. I appreciated Bechdel’s...

...Most family’s that are close usually have something that brings them together, like game night or camping. My family has hunting. Every year my aunt and uncle along with their two kids drive from New York Mills to my grandparent’s house in Pengilly. Deer season is the time of year that brings us together.
The way it works is early in the morning my two uncles, my two cousins, and my gramps and I all head out to position ourselves in this valley so that no matter which way they come through we can at least get a shot off. My story though begins around one or two in the afternoon after the prime hours that the deer move on their own. On this day I was riding with my gramps in his two door diesel pickup. We had decided to drive along the creek to see if we could kick a few up. We had driven about two miles along the creek in one of our fields south of the house. To stay awake and stay warm we drink coffee or hot chocolate so we had to stop quickly to take care of business.
I had my back turned to a hill where the wind was coming from when off to my left I hear a yell followed by a bunch of shots from my gramps 30-06 and I had to finish as quickly as possible as I reached for my 30-30 rifle and turn to see a large buck running across the field and leap into a neighbors field. Luckily we also own the field on the other side of it and the field is next to it is a friend’s field. As fast as I have ever seen me and my grandfather move we were in the tuck...

...Home and Family
The American family structure is in a state of disarray like never before seen in history. We have sacrificed the blessings of family in exchange for self-gratification. Since the family is the basic unit of society, the family is of critical importance. In order to repair the rifts in our society we must begin by repairing the family by returning to the original plan for the family.
Through the first man Adam, God instituted and ordained the home and family. While his wife saw him as the source of her life, Adam committed himself to her to the extent of choosing death by her side rather than life without her as sentence was passed because of her transgression. They considered themselves not individuals, but one, and became one flesh in their children. Self was offered in sacrifice on an altar of mutual love.
Almost six thousand years have passed since those first wedding vows were spoken. In that time variation of thought through the deception of the serpent has continued to distort and corrupt what God in the beginning called good. Back-alley discussion and four-letter words now describe the once sacred union of a man and his wife. Live-in situations without commitment and children without the benefit of wedded parents have replaced God’s ordination of a man, a maid, and a man-child....

...Demonstration Problem 6-1 Special Order
Davis Driveways, Inc. (DDI) pours concrete driveways for single familyhomes. DDI uses a cost-plus pricing approach. The company’s accountant prepared the following report showing how DDI established the price per driveway at $350.
A new builder in town, Rachel Rodgers, has acquired a large tract of land upon which she intends to build 200 single familyhomes. Ms. Rodgers offers to purchase all 200 driveways from DDI. However, she is willing to pay only $250 per driveway.
Required
Assume your group is a management team responsible for deciding whether to accept or reject Ms. Rodgers’ offer. Develop a response, support your decision with appropriate computations, and choose a spokesperson to explain your answer.
Demonstration Problem 6-2 Contrast Relevance, Cost Behavior, and Cost Type
Pass Fast, Inc. is considering two alternative locations in which to conduct its CPA review course. One alternative is an exclusive hotel; the other is a moderately priced training facility. The hotel is in a central location easily accessible to potential students. The training facility is in a less desirable location. Pass Fast has gathered the following cost data regarding the two locations.
| | |Training | |Cost |Product...

...Family is mainly considered as the smallest unit of the association which an individual can identify with closely. Normally, many people look at family as those people to who they are related by blood being nuclear or extended. However, the broader perspective of the family comprises of those people who are find themselves closely linked up by factors such as m
One form and the most common form of family is family by blood. This form of a family is made up by people who are born by same parents or belong to the same lineage. For instance, siblings, cousins and other people who share a similar point of origin by birth automatically become family by blood
Another form of family formation is through marriage. When a man and a woman join in a marriage form of relationship, they automatically make a family. Such an association is what is commonly referred to as the basic unit of a family. In most cases, this form of family expands through childbirth and later on comes to form an extended family and then a community in later years.
In most cases, in life people tend to form friendship associations with other people. Some friendships last form long periods of time to the point where these people form some personal association. In such instances, the people automatically become a family, and it is...